Stuck in Guangzhou

Good morning America.

We are stuck here. We don't know until when - but we know we aren't coming home Friday. The consulate is closed tomorrow and Friday as well so unless they make some special arrangement we will be here at least through Monday.

Surrender...surrender...surrender.

Things to be thankful for:

1. We are in friendly-ish, beautiful Guangzhou in a lovely (but expensive) hotel.

2. My cough is improving. 

3. Grace is tolerating her medicine and her nebulizer treatments beautifully.

4. Our children are all here with us - some families are eager to get back to their littles at home. 

5. There are 40 other families all in the same boat so we aren't *alone*. In fact there is a facebook group started called: "Stuck in GZ" - no I'm not kidding. 

6. We haven't lost our sense of humor even though we are all sharing one (1) bathroom. 

7. The hotel has a laundry service so we will be good with clean undies.

8. There's a starbucks across the street and they know what "Venti" means. Amen.

9. We have no place to go or be and we are currently living in a hotel room that is in a constant state of disaster and none of us care. It's gotten to that point.

10. God is still with us even now. Amen.

So as we processed through the stages of disappointment, grief, frustration and decided against throwing a tantrum - we've decided to make the best of it, because it could be worse. We could be stuck in Urumqi. Lord have mercy.

We took a nice long nap (us girls) all together. Little G is such a snuggle bug. After the nap we learned that the consulate would be closed through Friday so we did what was necessary...

We decided since we would be here for a few more days we needed some supplies so we headed out for a short walk to the local store. It's kind of like a multi-level super walmart only it's all in Chinese. Thankfully there are pictures and some english so we knew what we were buying. 

I'm not exactly sure why the big signs like "Bread" and "Delicatessen" are in english. Almost nothing else is and if it is in english it's something like "mango peach gel treat" : jello? Who knows.

We think those might be yogurt...but we aren't sure. We are ever on a quest for soft foods for Grace because her esophagus is narrower than it should be and she chokes easy. We did find baby cereal!

Cod fish and apple..

Pork liver and vegetable...hmmmm I think not. We did find regular rice cereal and did a happy dance.

Lots and lots of mystery food that we avoided...

That prickly food did not smell fruity. At all.

We even found some *puffs*.

Finally after about a 15 minute examination of our VISA card we were on our way.

Grace has become a big fan of bubbles...

We will have lots of time to blow bubbles in the next few days! 

It's not what we want. It's not what we hoped for. We all want to go home. Soon. Like yesterday.

But when we have no choice - and we are reminded *again* that we aren't in control - we roll with it.

We wait on The Lord. We stick together. All 5 of us.  We give thanks that we are bonding. We celebrate progresses like happy nebulizer treatments, tear free diaper changes, and new words learned in sign language (*more* is mastered). 

It's not so bad here...but there's no place like home. 

Please pray that the airlines will waive change fees when it comes time to change our tickets. 

Please pray that we are healthy - especially Grace. 

Please pray that we don't waste this time together wishing we were somewhere else. 

It's just not time yet. This too shall pass...